Today the White House patted itself on the back for an economic ’stimulus’ which they claim is proving incredibly effective at restoring economic growth:

Estimates of the impact of the ARRA made by comparing actual economic performance to the predictions of a plausible, statistical baseline suggest that the Recovery Act added roughly 2.3 percentage points to real GDP growth in the second quarter and is likely to add even more to growth in the third quarter…

This analysis indicates that the ARRA and other policy actions caused employment in August to be slightly more than 1 million jobs higher than it otherwise would have been.

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Compare and contrast. From the AP:

Democrats said the [stimulus] bill’s tax cuts would help 95 percent of all Americans, much of the relief in the form of a break of $400 for individuals and $800 for couples. At the insistence of the White House, people who do not earn enough money to owe income taxes are eligible, an attempt to offset the payroll taxes they pay.

How effective is that? Let’s ask an expert on the issue of tax breaks:

You’re getting $600. What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. But maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month.

–Michelle Obama on the Bush tax rebate of 2001. Somehow, the First Lady’s criticisms of paltry tax rebates was just not considered when the current stimulus bill was crafted.

I just had participated in a conference call with several House Republican Representatives, regarding the House Republican Economic Recovery Plan that the was debuted today. Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL) discussed the meeting this morning with President Obama, and their request that he encourage Congressional leaders to make good on his commitment to give Republican proposals a fair hearing. It sounds as if Mr. Obama was non-committal.

The three Congressmen aired strong concerns about the extraordinary level of spending in the Democratic package, and the near complete absence of growth-stimulating tax cuts. One fact to remember: there is more than 4 times as much funding for grass planting on the Washington Mall as there is small business tax relief. House Republicans have proposed the following package, which they believe will ‘cost’ far less than the Democratic leadership package, and which they believe might even lead to increased revenue, thanks to its potential to generate new business activity:

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Courtesy of Will Wilkinson, who ought to be listened to in full by Republicans in Congress since there is little to no chance whatsoever that he will be listened to by the Obama Administration or by Democrats. The fact that infrastructure repairs are not shovel-ready, as Wilkinson points out, and the fact that any kind of massive public works program will indeed be subject to graft, corruption, and general bureaucratic incompetence and snafus, should give even more ammunition to those who decry Keynesian stimulus and who realize–even if the Administration and Congressional Democrats do not–that public works spending will do nothing to revive the economy.